1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical path changing polarizer by which the optical path of the light incident on one of side surfaces of a liquid-crystal display device is changed to a viewing direction efficiently, and with which it is possible to form a transmission type or reflection-transmission double type liquid-crystal display device which is small in thickness, which is light in weight, and display of which is bright and easy to view.
The present application is based on Japanese Patent Applications No. 2000-4242 and 2000-167162, which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Greater reduction in thickness, size and weight of transmission type liquid-crystal display devices has been demanded for purposes of suppression of increase in weight which is accompanied by increase in size of television and personal computer display screens, reduction in size and weight of portable personal computers and portable telephone sets, etc. In the meanwhile, it is difficult to reduce thickness, size and weight of a transmission type liquid-crystal display device provided with a back-lighting system using a background-art bottom type or side-lighting type light pipe. Incidentally, the bottom-type back-lighting system generally has a thickness of not smaller than 4 mm because an illuminator, a light diffusing plate and a reflector are disposed just under a liquid-crystal display panel. Even the side-lighting type light pipe has a thickness of not smaller than 1 mm under the necessity of light transmission. When a light diffusing plate, a reflector, a prism sheet, etc. are disposed on the side-lighting type light pipe, the total thickness generally reaches a value of not smaller than 3 mm.
A liquid-crystal display device in which a half-transmission type reflector is disposed between the aforementioned transmission type liquid-crystal display panel and a back-lighting system is heretofore known as a reflection-transmission double type liquid-crystal display device which can be viewed in a reflection mode by using external light. The half-transmission type reflector is disposed in order to make viewing in a reflection mode possible. If there is no half-transmission type reflector, viewing in a reflection mode by using external light is so dark that the liquid-crystal display device substantially hardly functions as a reflection type liquid-crystal display device. The addition of the half-transmission type reflector, however, makes the volume and weight of the liquid-crystal display device larger. Moreover, light is diverged into transmitted light and reflected light by the half-transmission type reflector. There is therefore a problem that not only viewing in a transmission mode but also viewing in a reflection mode becomes dark so that brightness in a reflection mode is inferior to that of a reflection exclusive type liquid-crystal display device using a high-reflectance reflection layer.